You Can't Buy Everything is a 1934 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Charles Reisner and Sandy Roth and starring May Robson, Jean Parker and Lewis Stone.
According to Motion Picture Herald, the principal character of Hannah Bell (played by May Robson) was modeled after Hetty Green, famous as the miserly "Witch of Wall Street.
Mrs. Hannah Bell drags her son Donny on a sled through the snow to a children's clinic, where she gives a false name in order to avoid paying.
Furious, she goes to see her father's old friend, bank president Asa Cabot, and insists on withdrawing all of her—very substantial—assets, immediately.
Hannah’s mental state has worsened over 30 years, ever since she married fortune-hunter Harry Bell, who died leaving her to raise Donny in poverty.
The next day, on a yacht party Hannah refused to attend, Lorimer introduces Donny to Burton's daughter, Elizabeth.
Hannah is furious to learn that Donny met Burton, exposing Kate's plot, but the young people continue to meet.
The Clearing House Committee appeals to Hannah for a desperately needed loan, backed by gilt edge securities.
When she sees a $5 million demand loan on Burton's own railroad shares, which he has used as security for cash to pay his depositors, she agrees.
Donny and Elizabeth return from their honeymoon in Europe to headlines about Hannah wresting control of the railroad from Burton.
“Say, whose pneumonia is this, yours or mine?” In his February 3, 1934 review for The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall had praise for the cast but not for the film, “a heavy handed narrative in which the avaricious nature of the leading character is too exaggerated to be believable….If many of the incidents are forced, Miss Robson's eminently satisfactory acting does cause the picture to hold one's attention.
It is quite obvious that the crotchety, mercenary old person will at the close leave the screen with a smile and forgive her son for having married Burton's daughter…Miss Robson assuredly gives the impression of a woman with a greed for gold.